Home Selling - The Truth About Realtor Advertising and Why it Does Not Always Benefit Home Sellers

In order to justify their 6% commissions Realtors proudly cite the extensive advertising and promotional services they provide. When considering listing your home you will be shown a wide array of advertisements purchased by the brokerage company. You are told these are done to find buyers for your home. Upon further scrutiny this does not appear to be completely true. In fact, I will try in this article to show you how these advertisements benefit the brokerage company itself. I am doing this so that you will enter into a listing agreement -- if that is your decision -- with a clear understanding of what you do and do not receive from the Realtor. They provide some good marketing services but fall short in many other marketing areas that you need assistance with in order to sell your home quickly in today's real estate market.

Newspaper Ads

Real estate companies spend millions of dollars on advertisements that fill up a good portion of each weekends' papers. This money comes from commissions they earn from people like you. If you really look at these ads and think about how they are presented, and what their intent is, you will see that they are designed to build the business of the realty company, not sell your home.

Yard Signs

Note that these yard signs give the telephone number of the listing agent. The stated reason is to protect the home seller from unwanted telephone calls. However the business reason for the Realtor to do this is he or she uses signs on your yard as a very effective way to obtain new clients. Anyone who drives by and calls the number on the sign which is your yard will probably start working with your Realtor. Perhaps you should get a share of the commission when your agent sells a home to these other people!

Websites

As an internet marketer specializing in real estate, I am appalled at the quality of the websites given by realty companies to their listing clients. When you look at these websites what you mostly see are ads for the realty company and links to other properties. This is the worst way to market a property online. And on top of that, the listing is buried on their website with hundreds of others. Google will never send traffic to see your online listing on one of these sites.

Based on the above, perhaps you agree with me that instead of paying a real estate brokerage a large commission so they have more money to spend promoting their own businesses, you would be better off to save that money and create your own customized marketing plan 100% focused on selling your home.