The internet has become the go-to place for homebuyers and real estate agents need to devise new approaches to ensure they attract more leads with every listing. One of the biggest real estate portals in Canada, Point2Homes.com, looked at the listings on their portal and determined the number of leads each of them generates. They also surveyed real estate agents featured on their platform to get their opinion. From this research, they determined the features that make listings most attractive to Canadian homebuyers.
Use Good Quality Photos for Lead Generation
Online home buyers are keen to find out if the house is worth purchasing and the primary areas they look at is the online photos. By ensuring that you post high-quality photos of your listing, you are increasing the odds for generating more qualified real estate leads. Ideally, homebuyers will spend more time checking out the photos, and listings with high-quality images tend to get more views. The perfect balance is within the range of 6 and 15 photos. Statistics indicates that listings with 6 to 10 images generated 52% more leads compared to listings with few images and those with many images. To be effective, the photos should detail the property’s important features to attract the attention of prospective buyers.
Create a Concise Listing Description
When writing your real estate listing’s description, bear in mind that people don’t have the time or patience to read through long amounts of content. Attention span is decreasing as technology becomes more instilled in peoples’ lives. Remember that the goal of your listing description is to drive interest and exposure to the property. Properties bearing very short descriptions with a maximum of 250 characters draw more attention. Thus, the property listing descriptions should be concise and highlight the most important aspects of the property.
While listing the property online consider:
- Using bullets to highlight important points
- Ensure the Keywords are highlighted
- Break out key Sections through the use of subheadings
- Let each paragraph address an idea.
Here is a good example of how a listing description needs to look like
Pricing is a Crucial Lead Generation Factor
Canadian home buyers are after property prices when checking out listings. In fact, low priced listings get more views and almost twice as many leads considered to highly priced listings. Statistics show that listings selling at under $100k get 233% more leads with 45% more views compared to the expensive ones. However, while considering the pricing, homebuyers will also look at the location of the property. Pricey listings such as luxurious villas hold a higher commission and hence agents should find creative lead generation approaches to market them properly.
Charm Pricing Will No Longer Work
Also referred to as psychological pricing, this refers to a pricing and marketing strategy aimed at making customers perceive the price as lower than market value. An example would be adding 9’s to the end of the number, such as $799,999 vs $800,000. Considering that lower and affordable prices tend to attract buyers, real estate agents might be tempted to use this strategy. However, this psychological pricing no longer works in the digital era. In fact, according to findings by Point2 Homes, psychological pricing has no influence on the number of leads. 70% of the real estate agents surveyed believe that charm pricing still works like charm. However, findings concluded that this is no longer effective. The Canadian homebuyer is more educated and the small difference in pricing will not make any difference when making the purchase decision.
Property Type Makes a Difference
Perhaps its the new generation of homebuyers that prefer urban living, or the babyboomers looking to downsize; whatever the reason, these days Condos are generating 16% more leads than houses. Also interesting is that 2 bedroom properties generate 14% more leads than 3 bedroom ones. As for bathrooms, statistics indicate that listings with 1.5 bathrooms spark the highest interest. A Real Estate Agent can try focusing on getting more condominium listings that are getting more attention these days.
Certain Amenities Peak the Interest of Homebuyers
On amenities, agents often hold that pools aren’t attractive to home buyers; however, findings show that they generate 46% more leads compared to listings without a pool. Also, listings with water views increased the number of leads by 18% while on the other hand, listings detailing fireplaces generate 6% more leads compared to those without. Making sure to showcase these unique features of a property, in both the description and photos will help to attract more homebuyers to the listing.
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