Good Buy or Goodbye? 4 Infographics for Landlords and Sellers to Help Better Market Your Home
Here at Chalet, we’re a bunch of geeks. We believe in the power of numbers. Every decision we make has data behind it, which gives us an edge when finding the best solutions for your home.
Today, we’ll be going over one of the most important skills for landlords and flippers alike: marketing your home. For landlords, marketing is crucial to getting more tenant leads, which helps in two ways. First, the sooner you find a tenant, the less time your home will spend vacant, and the sooner you get that first check. Second, and perhaps more importantly, more prospective tenants means more options when it comes to choosing the right one.
For home flippers, the importance of marketing your home is more obvious — you want to sell it as quickly and for as much money as possible.
Some of the infographics below are primarily targeted towards home sellers. That said, home buyers and renters look for many of the same things, and many of the solutions discussed below apply to both. For instance, basic landscaping is not a particularly costly endeavor, and if it means being able to charge $10 or $20 more in monthly rent, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Let’s dive in.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Before posting your home on any website, you’re going to need some visuals. Many owners make the unfortunate mistake of taking low quality pictures. The above graphic shows why not using a DSLR camera is a grave mistake, especially for sellers: even the cost of a brand-new, $400 DSLR pales in comparison to the value it adds. “Average amount more per listing when shot with a DSLR” may as well read, “Average amount lost per listing when not shot with a DSLR”. Mathematically, there is no reason not to get one.
Yet simply buying a fancy camera does not a photographer make. Enlisting the help of a professional (or even amateur) photographer for a brief photoshoot will work wonders in terms of attracting tenants. Heck, it’s probably cheaper to find a photographer with his or her own DSLR. If you do decide to shoot it yourself, though, make sure not to make the mistakes listed above.
All the World’s a Stage
That’s a lot to wrap our heads around, but it boils down to one simple principle: you need to stage your home, and you need to stage your home before you look for renters. Far too many homeowners simply neglect to do this, and it winds up costing them. Paying a staging expert is much like paying a photographer in that they may seem unnecessary, but are statistically proven to be profitable investments.
While many homes may require a professional staging job, some homes just take a little bit of effort and creativity on the part of the owner. If you have a tenant moving out, you may be able to take advantage of using their furnishings and decor to show the property before they leave. This is a great way to get staging without the cost. When potential buyers and renters come in for a walkthrough, they don’t want to see your magazines or your kids’ toys. They want to see a model home; they want to see themselves living there.
Green Thumb, Green Wallet
Now that we’ve covered the inside of your house, let’s take a look outside. If staging the interior is the peanut butter on your profit sandwich, then landscaping is the proverbial jelly. Unlike staging, landscaping is something you must prepare at least a little bit in advance. Curb appeal, or how attractive your home looks from the curb, is just as or more important than interior appeal. If the exterior looks bad, no amount of staging will help, because no one will want to go inside in the first place.
To be clear, you don’t need to recreate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on your front porch. A neat and tidy lawn beats an excessively extravagant one any day. If you do choose to pursue any ambitious landscaping projects, make sure they’re realistic not only to finish, but to maintain once they’re in place. Remember: the tenant will be the one responsible for upkeep, so planting anything too high maintenance could potentially turn them away or wither under their care.
Pet Peeves
Our final infographic offers some key takeaways. Some are obvious, others not so much. Any experienced homeowner knows that damp patches and cigarette smoke turn away potential buyers and tenants and thus take the necessary steps to avoid these. Yet these same homeowners will often overdecorate, cluttering up the house and messing with the feng shui.
The best advice we can give is to keep it simple. People can easily tell when you throw a bunch of random but ostentatious decor together or plant some fancy new flowers right before hosting an open house. It comes off as ingenuine. After all, homes aren’t made to be looked at — they’re made to be lived in.
What do you think? Do you have any tips for putting your home on the market? Your opinion is valuable to us, so tweet at us, like our Facebook page, and recommend us below!
Special thanks to Jason Fox for providing the infographics!
