Online or Internet dating is an experience that allows individuals to contact & communicate with one another over the Internet. This experience is usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship. The practice has quickly become an accepted way to meet a significant other in recent years with continually growing popularity of smartphones & the World Wide Web.
40 million North American men & women use online dating in their search for love. That is about 76% of all single people in the US & Canada. The China dating app Momo, launched in 2011 & has 100 million registered accounts & 40 million monthly active users.*1 You may be surprised to know that the percentage of home buyers who begin their new home search online in the United States is 88% ( 2012 )*2 & even higher in Canada with 94+%. This is why it is very important to hire a Realtor® with a good online presence & a marketing plan that will expose your home to a wide variety of websites, not just MLS.ca®. When looking to meet someone, most do not limit themselves to one dating site. They will get on a few to increase their odds of meeting the one. Trust me, in this case, Real estate is very much the same way. You want to plaster your home for sale all over the World Wide Web. We have a marketing approach that has achieved this getting your home listed on over 50 websites., as well as on several social media sites. If time allows, we also like to create a little buzz about our upcoming listings providing snippets of information to tantalize buyers & their agents before the home actually comes on the market. When there is a buzz, the buyers gets excited. Their agents want to do a good job for them so they want to view the home first! This is one of the reasons our average Days On The Market are significantly lower than the industry average.
Most dating adults have set standards & criteria when they're searching for that special someone. The hundreds of dating sites normally require you to fill out either a questionnaire or an online profile or perhaps both. When buyers are searching for a home, they do the same: # of bedrooms, # of bathrooms, square footage, style, special features & neighborhoods. A dater might want to meet others who are serious about a lasting commitment. The individual with specific needs can cater to those core values with a niche dating site geared towards their preferences."*3 Some people only ask that their date be gainfully employed. Other daters want to meet others within a certain specific niche: a fetish, worldview, career, geographical area, status, age, activity, a certain ethnicity, religion or hobby. Of course the criteria you enter, brings up different results. The same is true of Real Estate searches online. The single first-time home buyer is not looking for the same type of home as say a family of 4 nor the income property investor. When it comes to real estate, we can say that the "Fix & Flip" buyer is similar to online daters looking for a fun one night stand. They are not looking for commitment. They are more interested in the overall structure/mechanical aspects of a property, want to get in & out quickly with little investment & hopefully having some fun & making a profit. The income property investor buyer is more comparable to say an arranged marriage - they are willing to keep commit, invest money, as long as it is profitable in the long term. They are not necessarily emotionally involved in the purchase. If it is not beneficial to them, they are not going to invest. The majority of buyers are like the majority of the online daters. They are looking to commit. The average buyer remains in their home for 5-10 years. They are hoping to find an emotional attachment. They are trying to create a "lifestyle" that they desire. Our jobs are Realtors®, is to determine who is most likely to be the buyer for your particular listing & present it in a way that will attract that buyer in a means that that group of buyers are most actively searching.
Photos need to stand out to the ultimate decision makers, the home buyers. Like e-harmony & other dating sites, if someone is attracted to the photo, then they will read what that person/ home has to offer them. Online, being bashful will get you nowhere. Women & men who post their photos receive more than twice as many e-mails as those without photos, according to a study published by economists at MIT & University of Chicago. *4 People want to see if the candidate may have the qualities & interests to create the storybook ending they are hoping for. Home buyers are the same way. Every advertiser knows, a good marketing campaign starts with great photos." The buying process starts with the click of a mouse and can result in the largest purchase of a lifetime. The first, primary exterior photo is absolutely critical to the sale of a home. When using real estate search engine websites, the buyer usually narrows the search criteria with elements such as price, location, number of rooms and lot size, so their next click action is based on photography. After clicking on a specific listing, the following interior & additional exterior photographs need to validate the initial click through decision & motivate the viewer to schedule a visit. In fact, 61% more clicks occur on houses captured by a real estate photographer, using a DSLR camera verses a point-and-shoot as reported by Redfin. " - Ashley Hall We actually had a set of selling clients who were highly dissatisfied with their previous Real Estate agent, & one of their main complaints was the quality of the photos that he took with his smartphone. We listed the home, took several dozen photos with our Nikon DSLR, used our iPhone to capture video, edited them both, created a virtual tour, & had the sellers approve the photos. The photos, YouTube video tour & our proven marketing plan, led to an accepted & unconditional offer in just 19 days. The other Real Estate agent had had the listing for 35 days. Sometimes, buyers fall in love with a home based on the photos alone, prior to even viewing the home in person. Buyers are generally emotional people & want to connect to the place they are going to call 'Home', much like couples.
Okay, here are some amusing links to more fully explain what I mean about photos & descriptions:
World's Weirdest Dating Website Profiles
Some Of The Worst Real Estate Listing Photos Ever
Contact! So the love prospects have discovered each the other now it is time to make contact to see if it will go anywhere. You want to make a good first impression. You want to connect on some level to see if a relationship will develop. Selling real estate is the same way. Part of our jobs as real estate agents is to weed out qualified buyers from nosey neighbours or those who are " just looking " aka looking for decorating ideas. When a member of the public calls on a property we have listed for sale, there are a series of questions that we ask during the friendly phone call/text/email, to distinguish the qualified from the waste of timers. Your life is a busy one, like ours, so there is no reason to clean your home & leave it so that someone can be simply curious. It would be like a woman spending time to get her hair done & get dressed up, only for her date to be a non show. As Realtors®, we can help you with suggestions on how to make your home show to its full & best potential. As a seller or as a dater, you only have a few seconds to capture someone's attention & only one chance to make a first impression. In the age of digital living our attention spans for scanning information seems to have shortened. Make sure your Realtor® offers a description of your property that is appealing & makes a buyer wanting more information.
Date night - think about good and bad dates that you have had - what made them good - what turned you off. Now think about your home. What do you love about it? What are the things you always wanted to change about it but just never got around to it? How can you highlight the good? When on a first date, men decide within 15 minutes if their date is worthy of a second date. Women take a little longer to ponder such a decision giving their date about an hour before making such a decision. It really isn't that much different in Real Estate. Buyers begin to make their decision on a home starting at the curb. Women are often more willing to add their personal touches to a house in order to make it feel like home. Men, today, prefer move-in ready. Think about the senses. Sight - is it appealing & clean. Hearing - what sounds will accentuate the feeling and location of your home. Smell - clean & homey. Lemon scented cleaners are always associated with cleanliness. There are other tricks we have learned throughout the years to stimulate the sense of smell to achieve a feeling of comfort of home that we share with our sellers. On a date, the ease of flow of conversation is usually a sign that it is going well. In a home for sale, it is the traffic flow. You want the visiting buyers to be able to move freely through your home without tripping over toys, having awkwardly placed furniture. Don't be afraid to contact a stager for help with this.
Other interesting factoids:
- 33% of singles agree that it’s less intimidating to ask someone out via text. Buyers prefer to contact agents via text as well. They also do most of their new home search on their mobile phones. Make sure that your Realtor has a mobile friendly format as their website. Cell phones, the top selling consumer product of all time, already have more mobile subscribers than there are Internet subscribers, & 40%of mobile users are finding websites through searches. In fact, studies show more than half of iPhone Web traffic goes through Google.
- 47% of singles research their dates on social networks like Facebook before meeting. 59% of people consult friends & family for purchasing decisions. Most of our preferences are learned & largely formed by social norms and expectations.
- In May 2013, 74% of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 62% of men.
-Facebook users tend to be more trusting.
-61% of global Internet users research products online. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
- 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
- 60% of all organic searches go to the top 3 organic search results.
- RE/MAX ranked 6th among the Top 200 franchisors for sales growth ( among the overall standings, the top ranked franchises were McDonalds, 7-Eleven, KFC, Subway & Burger King.
- YouTube has become the 2nd Largest Search Engine – bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask & AOL combined. (Social Media Today)
- 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. (Search Engine Watch)
- SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)
References: DatingSitesReviews.com; NAR; CREA; RE/MAX nova; RE/MAX; Match.com; OnlineDatingStatistics.com; StatisticBrain.com; Inman; DeltaMediaGroup